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Comment by durbatuluk | Hacker News Reader

As ecologist this scare me to death. Yesterday I was wondering where are the predators who didn't fill this "empty niche" on cities? Dragonflies are natural predators on environment but cannot stand urban micro climate. Thinking something will fill a empty niche is a theory. Even "niche" occupation is a theory which is show to not fit many places (amazon basin).

Some consequences are starting to be measured and we're turning our eyes because we don't like bites? I got Dengue in two occasions and I really hate these mosquitos but we must not be innocent to think there is no consequences and nature will solve this for us.

> They found that the birds produced on average two chicks per nest after spraying, compared with three for birds at control sites. > https://www.nature.com/news/2010/100721/full/466432a.html

Old compilation of papers about the consequences.

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Here’s a good reply I saw in reddit in response to your type:

> Malaria is only carried by a tiny number of mosquito species. Of the thousands of species only something like a dozen actually matter to humans. We can target exactly the ones we want and even better : nothing stops us from maintaining a population in some labs somewhere.

If it turns out they matter in any significant way, contrary to various impact analysis... we just release them back into the environment.

The current cost of not wiping out those few mosquito species is about half a million dead children. Imagine that someone was nuking a mid sized American city every year and you could stop it right now but you'd prefer to wait for a slightly more athsteticly pleasing solution.

How much blood would you be willing to let stain your soul .

Mosquitoes are already under constant attack, and no wishing can change that. To attack mosquitoes we use chemicals that have widespread effects on other animals, and humans regularly destroy entire ecosystems to remove mosquito environments. The ecological damage of our war on mosquitoes is huge and as old as civil engineering. We can't stop the war, but we could win the war.

>Some consequences are starting to be measured and we're turning our eyes because we don't like bites?

Mosquitoes are the main transmission vector for malaria, which kills more than half a million people every year. This is literally one of the biggest problems in the world.

I understand this very well but this happen only on low-income countries.

Here in Brazil zika, dengue and malaria are our everyday neighbors but most of problem are from lack of basic sanitation.

One of my first studies was estimating the effect of proximity/density of nearest forest at the neglected tropical diseases. Many people come with the same conclusion: no effect for dengue and yellow fever. Later Brazilian government started doing in-house visits trying to find small pounds of water on backyards. The result was astonishing, most backyards are like paradise for Aedes and similar mosquitos. Even water box are open and full of water for children to play on hot days. Now the campaign is to not create spaces where they can proliferate like: http://infodengue.ikiw.com.br/2015/03/como-evitar-dengue.htm...

Malaria is a special case because seems to not stand urban micro climate and people at these regions cannot afford to move. I understand the case of half million people losing their lives but realistic we will not stop using gene modification only on Anopheles. Here in Brazil will target minimum three genres of mosquito, any of them can cause diseases. Mosquitos also do not respect political borders.

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